python gripes survey

[Gonçalo Rodrigues]

On Sat, 23 Aug 2003 15:39:27 GMT, "Ryan Lowe" <ryanlowe0 at msn.com>
wrote:

>python is a big improvement on most languages that came before it, but no
>language is perfect. id like to make a list of some of the aspects people
>find most annoying, regardless of their feasibility of implementation. for
>instance, i discussed putting if clauses in for loops, and i noticed another
>thread about allowing {} and [] to be added and subtracted. if its something
>from another language (especially an obscure one), please explain how it
>works in case people like myself dont know the language.
>

Major gripes: names bound in nested scopes are read-only, not
rebindable. Related with this is the global declaration -- the only
declaration in Python! There should be another way to handle this:
something like scopes becoming objects where the names bound in it are
it's attributes and then you would have two functions global() and
enclosing() returning the global and the enclosing scope. Or something
to this effect :-)

Minor gripes: 
- trimming down the builtins, e.g. move enumerate to itertools, get
rid of map and filter, etc.

- Get rid of lambda or find a way for lambda to accept statements.

- Some of the more advanced Python stuff (super, metaclasses) has some
dark corners (check the bugs tracker). Bring on the light.

Things that I still haven't decided if they are gripes or not:

- __slots__. Dangerous hack, makes generic code much more difficult.

- names in for loops/list comprehensions leak out.

With my best regards,
G. Rodrigues